Arguably the Best at Debate

When I look back upon my previous week at Bates, my education does not particulary stand out as something worth typing about. My social interactions are not anything  to write home about (or rather, write "internet" about) either. But something that takes up a large portion of my time, and thus a large portion of my memory, is debate. I eat, drink, breathe, sleep, think and scream debate. Alright, alright, that might not be true. I am a basic human being who needs nutrients, rather than independent points of argumentation, to survive. But something quite interesting happened this weekend at the Brandeis debate tournament that I think is worth sharing about. Something exciting and rare and magnificent. Something surprising:
I did well.



You read correctly, sprightly readers of the world-reknowned blog "Tertiary, my dear Waston". I, Nicole Danser, known for my incoherant sentences, lack of communication ("you know what . . .ah, nevermind"), and inability to persuade, made it to the novice finals of the debate tournament. To put that statement into perspective, take into account that there were eighty teams at the tournament. Now lets assume that half of them were novices. So I made it farther than 39 other teams. in this tournament.

I really, really wish you guys knew and understood debate well enough to be impressed by me, but also maybe it's best that you don't. I can overexaggerate my skills this way. Alright, let's start at round 1:

Round 1, Taylor (my debate partner) and I hit a pretty good varsity team who threw a Gulf War case in our faces. It was full of "spec" (really specific knowledge that is difficult to debate against if you do not know much about the subject. i.e. "Yeah, well in 1985 so-and-so told so-and-so to do this." or "66% of blah is blah") We did not do well. In fact, we did not even do "okay". So that was fun.

Round 2, 3, 5: Taylor and I ran her case on whether or not "gay charter schools" should continue to be a thing or not. Take into account that all of the cases ran at this tournament are "opp-choice", which means we give the oppositon (we're government) the choice to which side they want to take on the case. Each time during this tournament, the opposition chose to abolish the gay/bullied kids charter schools (an example of one of these charter schools in real life is the "Harvey Milk School". Each time, Taylor and I spoke 26.5 (Taylor) and 26 (Me!). The highest one can get on this scale is a 27. The lowest is 21, I believe. The average first year novice gets around 24-24.5, doing super well with a 25. I AM A GOD AMONG WORMS, is what I am trying to say. We wone 2 of the rounds, and lost 1, even though we should have definately won the one we lost (you know, from an objective non-biased opinion). But seriously, I wouldn't say that we should have won if I didn't (and if others didn't) believe it either. You'll see this in the future.

Round 4:
Some MIT kids thought that they'd try and mess around with Taylor and I by running a gene patenting case but then did a total "case shift" (tried to change what they were debating about) by acting as if the case was about research patenting instead of gene patenting. Luckily, the judge realized that the government (the MIT pair) were being crazy unfair and picked us up (picked up = won the round, dropped = lost the round).

Alright, so there have been 5 rounds (they're called the in-rounds) and Taylor and I did well enough ( 3:2 wins to losses and really high "speaks"- how well we spoke (26s and 26.5s)) to get into the Novice Semi-final rounds. Alas, none of the other Bates novice teams made it to the "out-rounds", although Colin and Ian made it to the Varisty octo-finals (but were dropped a bit unfairly. You guys, I'll tell you when a drop is fair.)

Anyways, so Taylor and I got to decide if we want to go to the semi-final rounds as either government (the people running a case they choose) or opposition (the team who, since this tournament is opp-choice, gets to decide which side of the case they choose). But before I knew that we had a choice, I, being one who is mentally unstable and scared of public speaking ("Then Nicole, what the hell are you doing at at debate tournament?") had a bit of a mental breakdown inside of my head while deciding what cases we'd run if we were government. This is because we didn't have any cases to run that I had practiced before. And the one that Taylor wanted to run looked complicated (it was about civil disobedience and was quite intricate). Luckily, we had the choice to be opposition. But then people started giving me pep talks and I was psyching myself out. So while Taylor was talking to me and trying to calm an already-frazzled-me down I started to tear up and have a mental breakdown outside of my mind. She was startled, to say the least.Taylor is an excellent debater. She is eloquent and fierce and has been in many "out-rounds" before. So when I started to break down on her she took me aside and hugged me and told me everything way going to be fine. It was just a moment of weakness on my part, really. It's a scary thing, knowing your entire debate team who went to the tournament, a panel of judges, and the opposition are going to judge you on whether you speak well or not. However, I pulled myself together (I can stop crying as fast as I can start if I try hard enough) and put on a mask of confidence.

Semi-finals round:
The government ran a case about whether or not we should have private jails. Taylor, being a complete and total bad-ass, decided we would argue for the "wrong" side because she thought we could win it that way. We did. I think I spoke pretty well. I made a few jokes and acting confident, which is fairly important in debate. So since we won, we went on to the final round.

Final Round:
Taylor and I chose to be opposition again and (SPOILERS) even though we lost, I am so so so glad we decided to be opp. This is because 1) we totally should have won the round. 2) I was able to "spec out" on the round because 3) The case construct was this
"You are an evil ruler of an oligarchy. You get to choose decide which distopian society you rule. Choose: Either rule over the society in "1984" or "A Brave New World".
LIKE A BOSS, I had read both novels (Thank you, Ms. Topping and, although she is not reading this, Ms. Henderson). My partner, Taylor, had not read either book (So much for your private school education. MUAHAhaha-ha...ha...ha... *cough* what?). Anyway, I fed Taylor information about the book, and we chose the "Brave New World" side, which was totally the correct side. Our argument were beautiful, I drew upon a lot of points and events in the books and yet we lost in a 4-3 decision. A SPLIT DECISION, YOU GUYS. The only reason why we lost is that the panel of judges were comprised of novices who are not well known for their brilliant decisions. Also, Taylor responded to a POI (point of information- it is when the other team stands up and asks a question during your speech. It's allowed, they just have to be called upon to speak. They sort of... raise their hands to ask the question) about the possibility of revolt and revolution in the BNW world. She replied that there was no chance that that would happen (due to their genetics we manipulate, the conditioning that occurs from birth, and the self-regulation of people by caste systems people are happy in as well as the distractions of work, the self-medicated drugs they took and the sex,games, and movies they could go to). However, we should have pointed out that even if one person DID want to revolt and be like "Yo, guys. I DON'T want to be a beta", no one else would follow because they were all happy with their situation and aren't suspicious of the government because everything is laid out for anyone to see. But then there are a LOT of flaws on the side of the 1984 ruling world. Which I won't get into because I'll just ramble on for hours. Darn it, I should have recorded the debate and made you guys watch it.

Anyways, everyone who watched the debate (other than the 4 judges who ruled against us) were super surprised that Taylor and I lost (including some of the top debaters in the nation/world. Just saying...). We were THIS close to winning the round and thus winning the novice version of the tournament. You guys, I was almost a winner! But instead, we came in second place and Taylor was "3rd novice speaker" of the tournament, which means that out of all the novices, her speaking scores were the third highest.

So it was a good weekend, to be sure. Now I have 1.25 more essays to write and a midterm to study for before tomorrow and Friday. Also, it's time for debate (It runs my life, you guys. But now I'm sort of eloquent, which is a good trade-off, I think).

By the way, on Friday I'm flying home for the week. Weeee!

Yours truly,

Nicole Danser

EDIT: On Tuesday I won Bates' "Valentines Pun (Card) Contest". My winning entry?

"We should grab a meal tonight. I hear we have a lot in COMMONs"
It's funny because our dining hall is called Commons and also people have a lot in common. SO I could either be saying "we should grab a meal, I hear we have a lot of meals in Commons" or "We should get something to eat because we have similar interests". Just thought I'd explain that for the slow ones out there. Alright, I have to get back to an essay. Bye.